Let's face up to the costs of English spelling
David Crystal’s well publicised 'Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling' (September 2012) and Masha Bell’s ebook Spelling it out: the problems and costs of English spelling (July 2012) give very similar accounts of the development of English spelling, but the authors have very different opinions about the people who shaped it and how bad it is. They also differ on what should be done to improve the well-documented poor writing skills of many new recruits to industry and commerce who incur heavy costs for their employers.